Conversation at the family dinner table was likely to include talk of social justice for the victims of racial discrimination in Jim Crow Dallas and the rampant sexism that limited women’s career opportunities.

Her dad, David, was one of the leading civil rights and voting rights lawyers in Texas. Her mother later became the history-making former governor of Texas.

“They never took on any small issues,” Cecile Richards, now 54, says of her parents. “They took on the toughest issues and lived to tell the story. They were fearless in their own ways.”

Nearly half a century later, Richards is following her mother into the national spotlight as a prominent player in some of the toughest political issues of her time. As chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards has been at the center of raging debates over abortion rights, birth control, funding for women’s health programs and insurance coverage for contraceptive services.

Battle with charity

From her office in New York, the Texas native and mother of three has guided her organization through a controversial decision by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity to withdraw its funding from Planned Parenthood for cancer-prevention screenings – an action that was quickly reversed and led to the departure of at least five high-ranking executives of the foundation.

Richards has battled Republicans in state capitals, including Austin, who are seeking to end state funding for all of Planned Parenthood’s health-care programs because of the abortion and family counseling services the organization offers. And she has been a staunch advocate of family planning information and contraception services in the wake of an aggressive offensive by hard-line anti-abortion foes.

“Cecile strikes me as the best leader that Planned Parenthood could have under a troubling and adverse situation,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat who has known her for decades. “Cecile is just tenacious like her mom. She is articulate. And she is really committed to the cause.”

Richards says “the cause” is what keeps her going in tough political times: “Women’s health just doesn’t come with a political label,” she said in an interview. “At the end of the day, this country is not about ‘red’ and ‘blue.’ It’s a country that really believes in basic human decency. And that’s what we do at Planned Parenthood every day.”

Conservative groups have a much different perspective on Planned Parenthood, which performs about 25 percent of abortions in the U.S. And while abortion comprises just a tiny fraction of its spending, it is the political lightning rod that it a top target of Republicans.

She’s ‘right person’

Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, has launched a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood’s use of federal funds and accounting practices – a probe dismissed by supporters as political theater.

With Planned Parenthood under investigation in several states and on Capitol Hill, its backers say they need a leader with the political savvy and experience of Richards.

“Now that everything’s been so politicized, she’s absolutely the right person to be leading this organization at this point in time,” said Elena Marks, former health director for the city of Houston and currently chair of Planned Parenthood’s board.

Before accepting the Planned Parenthood job in 2006, she said she talked to her mother.

“I said, ‘well, boy, there are a lot of things I don’t know how to do,’” Cecile Richards recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, that’s OK, you’ll learn how to do them.’ And it made a big difference to me.”

For Cecile Richards, comparisons to her mother, a Texas Democrat icon, are inevitable. Friends call her less flamboyant and gentler than her charismatic mother – but more ideological, a trait she inherited from her father. Still, she can be cutting in her critiques.

Of Romney, who once sought Planned Parenthood’s endorsement when he was running for governor of Massachusetts, she notes, he “is incredibly out of touch with where the voters in this country are, particularly women.”

What mother would say

Richards says that Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose cut-off of state funds to Planned Parenthood has resulted in a loss of federal funding for the Texas Women‘s Health Program, is “literally on the frontier of taking women back to the 1950s.”

That kind of talk is not received kindly in the governor’s office.

“Sadly, the most anti-woman agenda has been coming from those at Planned Parenthood who were willing to see the entire Women’s Health Program killed, just to save their organization,” said Perry spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.

Asked how her mom would have responded to the cacophony of debate swirling around Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards thought for a moment and then responded, “My mother would say, if she were with us, ‘I hear America singing.’?”